Teesta Review: A
Journal of Poetry, Volume 7, Number 2. November 2024. ISSN: 2581-7094
--- Mandakini Bhattacherya
Tepi
squatted down in front of the smoking wok. She was in a hurry to get the
cooking done. The whole spices spluttered in the hot oil; in went the pieces of
pointed gourd for the curry that was the menu for the day. Its seeds
spluttered, too; pop, pop, went the thoughts in Tepi’s mind, in tandem. The
powdered spices went in next. As Tepi sautéed the vegetable and the spices, her
mind quickly counted the number of chapatis she would need to feed her
family of four for brunch. Her bedridden mother-in-law was waiting for her
first meagre meal of the day. She had been a kind mother to Tepi, helping her
in household chores, till the disease got her. It was she who had given Tepi
her present name out of affection; in another life, Tepi had another name. More
seeds and spices spluttered; Tepi sprinkled some water over the wok, and over
her agitated mind, that was working overtime. Ten . . . twelve . . . no,
fifteen would do . . . her daughter would soon be back from her tuition, and
again leave for school.
The wok was
placed over a coal-fired clay oven in front of her long one-room tiled hut
right next to a busy lane. There was light here, sunlight during the day,
streetlight at night. Inside, the hovel enclosed Tepi and her family in
semi-darkness during the day. There were no windows; the two sets of doors side
by side on the same wall were the only openings. The mosquitoes flourished
merrily, requiring mosquito nets to be hung all the time. At night, there was
light from an oil-lamp or lantern. Sometimes, a battery-operated light, when
fists were not so tightly clenched around money. The aroma of chilli turmeric
frying and bubbling together was tempting; Tepi’s stomach growled. Soon, she
would have eaten and left for her daily chores, cooking and cleaning in half a
dozen homes. Out of the corner of her eye, Tepi’s stream of consciousness spied
a rat skulking away under the bed. In a flash, Tepi had snatched up her broom,
leaving the curry to simmer, and swooped upon the rodent breathing fire like
the Rani of Jhansi, sending it to its rodents’ heaven. If only she had had as
much bravery to prevail with the Councillor . . . Tepi sighed.
The stream
bubbled along. Tepi was surrounded by green light . . . the sunlight reflected
off the green swaying crop stems . . . it was a fluorescent green world where
Tepi, then Kusumiya, grew up. Tepi had loved her name . . . she was the flower,
kusum, swaying in those green fields. Till marriage to Kanaai, the
rickshaw puller, at sixteen years of age, had brought her to the city and to
Tepi-ness. Perhaps her mother-in-law, living in the dark and dingy hovel by the
roadside, did not have stomach for the freshness of flowers, and so doomed
Kusumiya to urbanity and Tepi-hood. Kanaai, at first the intrepid one, had
developed a limp in a few years, and now eked out a living by sundry odd jobs.
Thus, Tepi had now become the most reliable source of family bread and butter.
Tepi’s
stream of consciousness gurgled and bubbled and cackled wryly at Tepi’s
memories, forcing her out with a sense of shame. In a flash, having fed and
eaten, Tepi the whirlwind was causing landfall in one home after the other.
In the
evening, Tepi was sitting at her doorstep, fanning herself with a hand-fan,
wrangling with her mother-in-law over trivial issues. It was perhaps the only
pastime both the women had. While middle-class families watched saas-bahu
serials in prime-time slots, Tepi and her mother-in-law were the real thing,
the ultimate saas-bahu combination that churned out arguments over the
smallest of things. Tepi’s stream of consciousness . . . ahem . . . smiled
meanly at this realisation. For Tepi could not afford electricity, and hence a
television, in her ramshackle hovel. The security deposit asked by the Councillor
was too much for them. Hooking from the temptingly hanging
electricity-conveying wires in blatant view, by the busy roadside intersection,
was out of the question; the Councillor’s goons would soon inform him. And, so,
they lived through sweltering heat and relentless perspiration and ‘darkness
visible’ day in and day out. Global warming was a reality at Tepi’s, much
before it was a fashionable curse bandied about at climate conventions.
Sitting at
road-level, fanning herself languidly, Tepi noticed a pair of blue sandals
walking by. They looked comfortable and trendy, with steady heels and secure
straps, the kind Tepi liked very much. She did not let them bother her, only
made a mental note. If she scraped and scrounged over the next one year, she might
be able to buy them. Hadn’t she saved for seven long years and finally bought
herself a pair of silver anklets? That was Tepi, never-say-die!
It was
humid, though winter was almost here. Kalipuja and Diwali were around the
corner. Workers hired by the local Puja Committee had been putting up LED
lights overhead on the streets the last few days, and from tonight they had
switched on the lights by way of checking up. Tepi and her bubbling mind
finally relaxed on the creaking bed, looking out at the twinkling lights
through the doors; by and by her eyelids drooped.
* * * * * * *.* * * * * * * *
The blue
sandals had no less a pace than Tepi’s. Heaving her two bags on each shoulder,
in a hurried march to home after getting down from the bus from her place of
work, Reba was glad of her blue soldiers, that bore the brunt of her marches.
But inevitably, the blue sandals slowed down before a hovel where darkness
prevailed always. Reba was too ashamed to look inside at the poverty and
deprivation. It was an innate sense of decency and privacy in the face of want
that perhaps prevented her from looking in at the dirty, toiling, perspiring
faces, that inhabited an island of darkness surrounded by well-lit, ventilated
homes. How she would have loved to sit on a corner of the rickety wooden wide
bed covered with layers of grimy mattresses, and listen open-mouthed to the
cause why light had shunned them perhaps forever! Forever, because since
childhood Reba had passed by the hovel, and never had its fate turned. It was
with sheer and utmost disbelief that Reba had always wondered, again and again,
how, in a city where the poorest of the urban poor had some electricity
connection in their homes, these wretched beings had been shunned forever
beyond the pale of human civilisation.
Back home,
Reba changed into comfortable clothes, made a cup of tea, and sat down in front
of the flickering television screen, hungry for any morsel of news on the
latest fever to grip the city. Somewhere, a girl had died. Not a great matter -
girls died here, there, and everywhere, sometimes by unfortunate brutalities,
and the city always coped with them; news today, newspaper packet for telebhaja
tomorrow. But a spark from this girl’s pyre had been borne by the wind, and
seemed to dance a wicked dance on the dazed city’s streets, igniting candles,
fires, earthen lamps, mobile phone screens, torches held aloft by hands. The
familiar people had become unfamiliar; no matter what form of light they
carried in their hands, the greatest change was that their faces had lit up.
Drawn by this dawn of light at night, Reba had also walked in a dozen marches,
watching herself change, too. At other times, she watched the TV news, showing
faces aglow with hope and rebellion. She watched each face, trying to classify
the exhilaration by gender, age, class; who were the most vociferous? At times
she traced her own face with her index finger, wondering if her dull visage
resembled those faces aglow. The mirror would not do, for who could trust a
mirror?
The
twinkling lights had taken over the streets. Kalipuja and Diwali were around
the corner, the city was loath to loose its festive sheen. Durga Puja had been
dull, marked by reverence for the dead flame. But Reba was quietly making up
her mind. Along with the other flame-makers in the city, she had resolved not
to celebrate any occasion in solidarity with the dead flame. She would not
light diyas, or put up the strings of Chinese lights and lanterns that
made her home look so beautiful and sparkling this time of the year, lasting
till Christmas.
But as Reba
nestled into her bed, comfortable in her reform-seeking rebellion that gave her
a sense of being socially useful, she was assailed by a niggling doubt. Was she
a part of the hordes? Did she seek to keep up pace with the herd, secure in
their numbers? Would she ever have the courage to take up cudgels to light up a
poor hovel, an island of isolation in the midst of waves of light? Would she
ever have the courage to look into the woman’s eyes, who, unknown to her, had
been bequeathed fondly with the name ‘Tepi’?
What would
you do? - shun the lights, like Reba, trying to illuminate the nights forever,
or whisper to the twinkling fairy lights in sleep, like Tepi? Whose light was
it, anyway?
___________________________________
Notes:
Chapatis - flatbread
Saas-bahu - mother-in-law and daughter-in-law
Telebhaja - fritters
Diya - earthen lamp
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Bio:
Mandakini
Bhattacherya,
from Kolkata, is Associate Professor of English and a multi-lingual poet,
literary critic and translator. She has her own Poetry Page on the Dallas-based
Mad Swirl Magazine. She participated in the All India Young Writers’ Meet
organised by Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi in February, 2020, and delivered a talk
there on Short Fiction in 2021. She edited the international short story
anthology The Mixed Fare in 2021, and is Associate Editor of the Muse
of Now Paradigm anthology (Authors Press, 2020). She is co-translator of A
Life Uprooted: A Bengali Dalit Refugee Remembers, published by Sahitya
Akademi, New Delhi (2022). She is ex-Joint Secretary and current member of Proyas,
a women’s NGO in Kolkata.
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